Genocide

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking, in collaboration with the International Criminal Court, or through the creation of appropriate tribunals, to bring to justice perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, international criminal justice and accountability is a fundamental element of our foreign policy. The United Kingdom firmly believes that there must be no impunity for the most serious international crimes. We provide financial and political support to the International Criminal Court and other international tribunals. With our international partners, we also fund efforts to gather and preserve evidence that could be used by courts to bring perpetrators of these crimes to justice.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that helpful reply. Will she confirm that it is now 14 months since the House of Commons designated the atrocities in Iraq and Syria—committed against Yazidis, Christians and other minorities—to be a genocide, this crime above all crimes? What progress has been made in collecting court-ready evidence and in referring those responsible to the International Criminal Court, to which she referred, or to a regional tribunal? If accountability and justice in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Sudan and North Korea are to be credible, should we not be giving this matter greater priority and urgency to ensure that we see no compromising of the gold standard of the ICC?

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank the noble Lord. He raises an important point and I reiterate that the United Kingdom’s support for international criminal justice is based on the principle that there must be no impunity for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court has been making good progress, as the noble Lord is probably aware, in the prosecution of persons alleged to have committed crimes. Indeed, 2016 was the court’s most productive year for judicial output, with seven convictions in three cases.

In relation to the gathering of evidence from Iraq and Syria, the UK provides financial support to a specialist organisation to conduct investigations in Syria and build prosecution-ready criminal case files against the high-level perpetrators, in accordance with international standards. The noble Lord may be aware that last year the United Kingdom funded a project through our Magna Carta fund to improve the documentation of sexual violence and other gender-based cases in a victim-sensitive way in several areas of Iraq. That has assisted in the development of cases in which so many women from, for example, Christian and Yazidi communities have suffered.